The “Moderate” face of Hamas looks like lipstick on a pig

by SB on June 2, 2017 at 2:30pm

Hamas would have us believe that it has undergone an ideological makeover. Apparently, they have become “moderate” but once you remove the cheap face paint it is clear that their extremist face is totally unchanged.

On Monday, Hamas, the U.S. and E.U.-designated terrorist group that controls Gaza, released a new political document that attempted to put a moderate face on its extremist agenda of eliminating Israel.

…the new document does not accept Israel’s right to exist. It also does not disavow or replace the group’s official charter, which blames the Jews for both world wars, cites the anti-Semitic screed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and is riddled with anti-Jewish tropes.

The document does, however, contain many obvious and hilarious lies…

1. Hamas believes in “democracy” and “pluralism.”

…“Hamas stresses the necessity of building Palestinian national institutions on sound democratic principles, foremost among them are free and fair elections.”

In reality, Hamas hasn’t held elections in Gaza since it seized power in 2007 and literally threw its political opponents off roofs. To secure its rule, the terrorist group imprisons journalists and violently suppresses any attempts at political dissent.

2. Hamas supports women’s rights.

…“Hamas believes that the message of Islam upholds the values of truth, justice, freedom and dignity and prohibits all forms of injustice and incriminates oppressors irrespective of their religion, race, gender or nationality.”

But if this is what Islam preaches, it is not what Hamas practices…as the New York Times reported in February, even a woman riding a bicycle in public is considered an act of defiance by Hamas, which banned women from Gaza’s 2013 marathon. Abortion is illegal in Gaza, and honor killings go unprosecuted.

3. Hamas advocates religious tolerance.

The document contains several gestures toward religious inclusion, at least for Christianity.

…Unfortunately, contrary to its florid language, Hamas has offered exactly the opposite. “Gaza Christians long for days before Hamas cancelled Christmas,” wroteThe Guardian in 2011, just a few years into the terror group’s reign in Gaza. “Of the 1.5 million Palestinians now living in the Gaza Strip, fewer than 1,400 are Christian and those who can are leaving,” …“There hasn’t been a Christmas tree in Gaza City’s main square since Hamas pushed the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in 2007 and Christmas is no longer a public holiday.” … Under Hamas… Gaza’s Christians have been forcibly converted and even murdered…

4. Hamas is not anti-Semitic, because only Europeans are anti-Semitic.

The document clumsily attempts to shrug off Hamas’s long history of anti-Jewish bigotry. But it goes so far overboard that even the most credulous readers are unlikely to be taken in. “Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds,” the document dubiously claims. “Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage.”

In actuality, Hamas’s official spokesman is someone who claims Jews bake their Passover matzo with the blood of gentile children, and just this past February, the group released a gruesome music video featuring “an ultra-Orthodox Jew having his head blown off and stuck on a pike, as well as another being shot in the head through crosshairs.” And this is to say nothing of the Anti-Defamation League and Pew Research Center findings on anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world, which is far from immune to anti-Jewish prejudice. Which brings us back to the new Hamas document itself, which is replete with anti-Semitic notions, despite efforts to sanitize its language…

5. Jerusalem has no Jewish holy places.

Regarding Jerusalem, the document claims, “Its Islamic and Christian holy places belong exclusively to the Palestinian people and to the Arab and Islamic Ummah.” Why are Jewish holy places entirely omitted from this assertion? Not because Hamas recognizes Jewish rights to their most sacred sites, but because the group has repeatedly denied that the Jewish Temples ever stood in Jerusalem, claiming that such archaeologically proven facts are “Israeli fictions.”

If you agree with me that’s nice, but what I really want to achieve is to make you question the status quo, look between the lines and do your own research. Do not be a passive observer in this game we call life.